Jesus did the funniest things

The Tring tiles add spice, and maybe a little sugar, to the question "What would Jesus do?" These adventure-packed ceramic cartoons depict scenes, unmentioned in the Bible, from Jesus's boyhood. Apparently created in the 14th century, they once enlivened a wall of the parish church in the town of Tring. Several of the tiles now reside under glass, in case number eight of Room 42 of the British Museum. Every year, almost all of the museum's 5 million or so visitors pass them by, unaware of the potent lessons that the tiles offer.

The spare New Testament description of Jesus is given some fleshing out. The museum has provided labels that help the visitor to make sense of the awkwardly-drawn action.

We see young Jesus learning how to play with others, and how not to. The accompanying label explains: "Jesus plays by the side of the river Jordan making pools; a boy destroys one with a stick and falls dead." Then: "The Virgin admonishes Jesus, who restores the boy to life by touching him with his foot."

We see that Jesus the boy is rambunctiously playful: "A schoolmaster is seated on the left. Before him stands Jesus, a boy leaping on to his back in attack. The boy falls dead." Then: "Two women complain to Joseph on the left, while Jesus restores the boy to life."

As with all artwork, religious or otherwise, these images invite further, and perhaps different, interpretations. As the boy is falling dead, the schoolmaster and Jesus rather appear to be smiling and giving each other what is now known as a "high five". The two women who complain about the death do so with what would, in other circumstances, be taken as smug smiles.

Where the museum labels' author sees that Jesus revives the other boy - the one who mucked with Jesus's pools by the river Jordan - "by touching him with his foot", some observers may think they see a kick being administered.

A few of the cartoon sequences are incomplete. For these, the museum's captions tell what happens in the missing tiles.

We see the curiosity-driven Jesus learn, in fits and starts, some fine points about how to teach people a lesson: "Parents, to prevent their children playing with Jesus, have shut them in an oven; Jesus, asking what that oven contains, is told 'pigs'. (The remainder of the story, showing the children transformed into pigs and their subsequent cure by Jesus, is missing.)"

We see how, as word about the boy Jesus spreads, neighbours sometimes leap to unkind assumptions about the lad: "A father locks his son up in a tower to stop him playing with Jesus." Then: "Jesus helps the boy out of the tower. (The remainder of this story, showing the father struck blind on his return, is missing.)"

The Tring tiles presumably will continue their residence in the British Museum. There are no announced plans to reproduce them for contemplative use in churches, offices and the home.

· Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com), and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize